


The Cold

by SlytherinSweetheart1



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 20:30:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinSweetheart1/pseuds/SlytherinSweetheart1
Summary: After the events of 'The Deal'. Mal has been avoiding River, but its cold in the black, and she is right there beneath him.





	The Cold

She’s been sleeping in his bunk every night for the last fifteen.   
  
It’s been three weeks after the Incident - which they do not talk about, and he certainly does not think about, ever, not even in the shower, and definitely not when he’s in bed  _since she is there as well_.  
  
He should have known, he thinks, from the moment he saw her in that box he should have known that there would be no escaping her.   
  
River Tam would be the death of him.   
  
  
He wakes up to her several times in the night - often because his arm has fallen asleep under her or to a mouthful of hair, or like now, to the feel of her pressed into the mattress beneath him, his cock hard and twitching.  
  
This position is like some  _gorram_  curse, some kind of magicking, because she is right there and he is not allowed to touch. Again.   
  
It is worse after the Incident, impossible, because he knows how she feels beneath his hands. Hell, he has his hands on her right now, and she would be nothing but willing and supple, and...  _asleep_.   
  
He is a bastard for not moving away yet. They must have been sleeping like this for a while, with his forehead against her neck and his lower body nestled between her thighs. It is not surprising, in sleep River clutches at him with both arms and legs.   
  
Mal can’t help but open his mouth against her skin where the nightshirt had slipped over one shoulder. He drags his stubble over the same skin, watching it raise angry and red. He kisses it, again and again, and pretends that he isn’t already rocking against her.   
  
No! No!, he thinks, and wretches himself away from her.   
  
  
  
For days Mal couldn’t think of nothing but her and the night he... the night of the Incident. And so he avoided and ignored her because the sight of her was always transposed with the image of her astride him, mewling ‘please’ as she rode his fingers.  _He should never have kissed her. He should never have opened his eyes._  
  
Then the inevitable happened, without their mechanic things started to fall apart. It was only the little things that Kaylee tweaked and adjusted daily and that they were going to survive without - except it was  _gorram_   _cold_.   
  
And so, when he found River on the bridge, shaking beneath her blanket and staring out into the black, it was nothing to gather her into his arms.   
  
‘Cold.’ She chattered, and her lips were blue, and he still wanted to kiss her. That was wrong, but it would be worse to let her die, and so he had guided her to his bunk and beneath his sheets.  
  
When she was warm, and settled, and sleeping, Mal realised how desperately he  _missed_  Simon. Then he thought about what he was doing to Simon’s sister the night of Simon’s wedding, and he was more than weary of meeting Simon’s eyes again.   
  
  
  
  
  
They didn’t talk about it, but the next night he found River in his bed.   
  
She said ‘Cold!’ in that determined voice, and so Mal laid next to her and pretended to sleep.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Now she wakes, shivering, because in his haste Mal has dragged the covers off her. Her nipples harden and he sees nothing else, feels nothing but them beneath his hands, in his mouth, between his teeth, and  _its not fair to want something this badly._  
  
She reaches for him in the dark, catches his shirt beneath her fingers and pulls. He lands against her with a heavy thud.   
  
‘Blankets!’ she demands, and settles the bed covers over them again. She squirms beneath him, and he realises that he must be suffocating her. When he tries to shift away, her hold on his shirt tightens.   
  
‘Stay. ‘s nice.’   
  
Mal’s body is rigid and tense. He is trying so desperately not to think, because its wrong and because she is a reader and this is bad, bad, bad.   
  
Until: ‘Would you prefer me on my knees?’  
  
 _Wait, what?_ , he thinks.   
  
In answer, River moves her hand between their bodies, and he thinks, no, she wouldn’t, in the instant her hand closes over his cock.   
  
‘River!’ he exclaims, outraged, but her hand continues to ghost over him, tentative and unsure.   
  
‘Would you prefer me on my knees?’ she asks again.  
  
Mal is sure he has lost all power of speech, his grip on reality, his senses, because she is touching him.   
  
‘A kiss for a kiss.’ she says, smiling up at him in that way that is entirely too  _woman_.   
  
‘Darlin’, no.’ He whispers, and places his hand on hers to stop her, but the image of her words, of her legs spread beneath his mouth, and the noises she would make - it’s all too much.   
  
‘Oh.’ She says, as if that version of it did not occur to her. ‘I did not know you could... oh.’  
  
Something in him, something male and primitive,  _snaps_.   
  
‘River. Darlin’.’ He says, and kisses her.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She does end up on her knees for him that night. Still tentative, and unsure, because despite seeing and feeling both sides of this particular act, it is all new to the part of her that is  _River_.   
  
The taste of him, the feel of him against her tongue, the width and the heaviness and that feeling that its all too much, too full, is new and exciting. There are no other thoughts when she does this. His thoughts are an incoherent jumble, but for the first time they are peripheral.   
  
It’s different then the night he had his fingers inside of her because there were  _no_  thoughts then. Now, she is only aware of him, the way his body trembles beneath her hands, the way his breath hitches, the way she can’t help but pull away to watch him, glorious, and then put her mouth all over him again.  
  
He moans her name as he comes, gripping at her hair. There is nothing polite about this.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
He kisses her when he finally manages to open his eyes, and watches her and parts his mouth for her when ever she leans in for yet another kiss.  **  
**


End file.
